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Recently, Union Finance Minister Piyush Goyal introduced an Interim Budget for 2019 in Parliament. An Interim Budget ordinarily doesn't drill down new plans or new schemes and doesn't disclose any policy measures. The government allocated Rs 608.87 crore for research and innovation, a massive increase from the previous allocation of Rs 350.23 crore.
Education has a significant impact on employment prospects and is generally good insurance against unemployment, even in difficult economic times. Anybody trying for any entrance examination has to pay 18% GST. In this way, the government is making a lot of money from the education sector which is totally affecting the development of the country or nation.
Specialists from the education sector praised the Union government's declarations on increment in the budgetary allocation to the National Education Mission and National Artificial Intelligence Portal. The legislature recently reported a financial plan of Rs. 38,572 crore for its National Education Mission which includes the centrally sponsored plans for education under which it assigns assets or funds to the states and union territories.
A few educationists and ed-tech entrepreneurs communicated their disappointment over the allocations to the entire education sector.
Kapil Rampal, Director of Ivory Education says, “The Union Budget of this year is an interim budget focused at the election. For the education sector, it is a major disappointment. In order to incorporate the quota, there is a burden on Indian universities to increase their seats by 25% without allocation in the budget for enhancing infrastructure, faculty, and other resources required. In fact, no additional funds are allocated this year. The marginal increase in allocation is mostly for cost initiates such as fancy research projects like IMPRESS, RUSA and Uttar Bharat Program.
National Education Mission, which has always missed its targets, has been given an enhanced allocation of Rs. 38,572 crores from the total budget of Rs. 93,847.64 crores.
For the private education sector, the government continues to bleed the sector with a very high GST rate of 18%, which they do not intend to bring down.”
The education sector is not at all happy with this announcement. Among major declarations for the sector was building up an organization for AI, approximately 2 lakh more seats in education institutes over India but a decrease in the funding of HEFA and indirectly for central institutions along with no visible mention in the speech about the sector has left many disappointed.
The allocations for the education plan have diminished over the last four years. This sector needs at least a hundred crores more to grow or to expand the infrastructure and accessible staff to satisfy the need which will be made by the expansion in the number of seats with the coming reservations. In central education institutes alone, there is a void of thousands of faculty and non-teaching staff.
The education sector should need somewhere around 6 percent of the GDP. There was very little accentuation or mentions on the education budget. Spending on education also implies an expansion in development. The private education sector is still struggling which has reduced its performance drastically.
If the administration goes for 8 percent economic development, it will have to increase the spending on education. India is positioned much lower than its neighbors in the human advancement list (HDI) which is a marker or indicator of the social sector, particularly education, employment and so on. New businesses can't be a guaranteed mode of education for educated youth.
Education gives us information or knowledge of our general surroundings and changes it into something better. It also creates in us a perspective of looking at life. Information cannot be converted into knowledge without education. Education makes us fit for interpreting things, in addition to other things.
This article is written by Ivory Education.
